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A Right Way and a Wrong Way by Roger Dean Kiser

I could not count the times that I ran away from the Children's Home Orphanage in Jacksonville, Florida. I know that it had to be in the hundreds. I was 11 years old in 1957. I remember feeling very alone as I walked along Park Avenue. I was hungry. I was cold and I had no where to go.
"Hey boy" yelled this heavy set man who was standing in the doorway of a machine shop.
"Yes, sir" I said.
You wanna make a couple of dollars?" he asked me.
"Yes, Sir" I replied again.
"I would like for you to go down to the liquor store at the end of the block and get me a pint of whiskey. Can you do that for me?" he asked me.
"I can do that for two dollars" I told him.
He walked back into the shop and he took a twenty dollar bill out of the cash register and handed it to me. I stood there looking at the large bill. I had never held that much money before. That was all the money in the world as far as I was concerned. I turned and started walking down the block to find the liquor store. As I looked back I saw the man disappear out of the doorway. As I reached, and turned the corner, I started to run as fast as I could. In those few moments I had decided to keep the twenty dollar bill to feed myself. I had no intention of ever bringing it back to him.

Several minutes later I was blocks away. I sat down on the city bus bench gasping for air. As I sat there I looked at both sides of the twenty dollar bill. "This will feed me for a long long time. Maybe even buy me a place to live" I thought to myself. All of a sudden this very strange feeling started to come over me. Even to this day I am not sure what that feeling was. All I knew for sure is that what I was doing would be hurting that man. I sat there for several minutes trying to make that feeling go away. But it wouldn't. I got up off the bench and I started running back towards the small shop. When I reached the liquor store I went inside and I purchased a pint of whiskey. I put the all the money into the paper sack with the bottle and I returned to the machine shop.

"I was wondering why it took you so long" said the man, as I walked in. He took the money and the small bottle out of the brown paper sack and then he handed me two dollars. Looking down at the ground I thanked him. He patted me on the shoulder and I walked out of his shop. As I walked along Park Avenue that same feeling came over me once again. It just would not go away. I turned around and walked back to the machine shop. I walked up to the man and I held out the two dollars that he had given me.
"I was gonna take your whole twenty dollars and I was not gonna come back" I told him.
"But you did come back. That is what is important" said the man.
"But I still have that bad feeling" I told him.
The man reached out and he took the two dollars from my hand and he stuck it in his front pocket.
"I'm gonna show you how to get rid of that feeling" he told me.

All day long I worked cleaning up his shop. Many times I cut myself and my hands bleed from the metal shaving that I picked up off the floor. By the end of the day I had numerous bandages from the tips of my fingers to my elbows. I watched him make parts which he told me would be used in the space program for their rockets.
At seven that evening he called me into his little office.
"Let's see now. You have worked 10 hours. I will pay you $2.12 an hour for ten hours work. That comes to twenty one dollars and twenty cents." he told me.
I held out my hand as he counted out the money.
"Am I still a stealer" I asked him.
"NO! Your not a stealer, boy. Not by a long shot" he told me.

After leaving the machine shop I would stop every block or so to see if that bad feeling would come back. But it never did. Over the next fifteen years I would return, now and then, to have lunch with Mr. Lewis in his little run down machine shop. I am so thankful that I met someone along the way who took the time to teach me that there was a right way and a wrong way to make twenty dollars.

The stories of Roger Dean Kiser
http://www.rogerdeankiser.com

*Editors Note: Write Roger and tell him what you think of his story [email protected]

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